Largely just agree. It seems to be the case (and this isn't just a Classic Dom problem, it's present in lots of other parts of the British Right too) that his work history doesn't really include being part of a large scale organisation, or managing a complex department outside of government. Of course, such experience is no guarantee of wisdom, but the lack of it seems to be extremely fertile ground for atomistic thinking.
(Mind you, looking at the polls, starting to worry that this might be a problem across our politics and going to keep biting us despite a change of government.)
Now I would really like a discussion between Dominic Cummings, Dan Davies, and Henry Farrell. Feels like they are all circling similar problems from very different perspectives, assumptions, and tactics...
Yeah. I could see how the conversation might go sideways--or that you give him some implementation perspective that makes him effective in ways that you might not like...
I'd have said Dom's key ideas include that only him and about three of his mates should be allowed to decide anything, and that spreading misinformation to achieve his short-term goals is totally justified, neither of which seems likely to help with the management capacity problem..
I was trying to be maximally fair within the self imposed word limits ... I'd disagree with "only him and about three of his mates", he seems to me to be always trying to find more people who share the vision. You're right about the other thing though - he really does ignore the way that the tactics he's got into the habit of using are themselves incredibly damaging.
"There are two ways to adapt from the current state to the future state:
Declare the future state by leadership edict. I call this 'bludgeoning.'
Lay out a roadmap that allows people, tools, rewards, and practices to reach the destination smoothly and predictably over time. I call this 'navigating.'
Bludgeoning is rampant at Microsoft. It’s painful, error-prone, and wasteful. Although bludgeoning usually, eventually succeeds, it often takes multiple attempts. These attempts are not iterations, but failures followed by resets. Guess what? There’s a better way."
I think this post was kind of subtweeting (subblogging?) the leadership of the Windows organization at the time, which had taken some broadly-justified-in-the-abstract changes to how testing and releases worked, associated with the then-recent CEO change, and implemented them in an extremely abrupt and chaotic manner, causing quality degradation from which I don't think they've really recovered to this day.
There are also a couple of good posts by the head of Office engineering at the time, Terry Crowley, detailing how they more successfully took Office through analogous changes, in which he also casts a bit of shade on the Windows organization:
You might reasonably suspect he's biased from his position, but the posts do accord pretty well with my own perception. BTW, one bit I especially like:
"Establishing feasibility before pointing the team down a path was also critical. “Establishing feasibility” sounds bloodless but often the process was actually some key passionate engineer completing a deep analysis or building a model or prototype that created trust and belief. The click-to-run installation tools was one example where one of our senior engineers, known for an ability to bull through complexity, was convinced he could take on the notorious complexity of the install process and build something that would change the way we worked. My style is usually point by point deep analysis but sometimes you need someone who will combine some key clarifying insight and then just keep on digging and chipping away at a nasty problem until it is solved."
This is waaay too generous. Cumming's worldview and approach are both damaging.
First, why would you not take into account the "needless fight-picking and intellectual showboating"? These suggest vanity as opposed to substance is his driving force; why on earth is it reasonable for him to dismiss 'politicians' when he himself invests so much in his image?
Second, the basis for his worldview is that you just need to cut through red tape - find the right leaders and let them move fast and break things. But there are really, really few people who are good enough to do that in a net beneficial way! You cannot expect an organisation as huge as the British government to be staffed with such people at all levels. You need bureaucracy to control for peoeple's incompetence, and unfortunately, corruption.
Third, his highly divisive and manipulative approach is in itself damaging. It erodes trust, promotes bad behaviour and lying, and sets a bad standard. His modus operandi is leaks, betrayals, backstabbings, backroom dealings, etc. Is this how we want people to behave?
Well, reading Cumming's writing is bloody hard work - partially down to the "intellectual showboating" or "look at the stuff I know, I'm clever, me" - and there's more than a fair amount of analogy building, which doesn't help. For my money, you might as well attempt to ignore that element, just on the off-chance there's actually something there.
"You cannot expect an organisation as huge as the British government...", umm, sorry, as a voter, I should bloody expect that the people involved in the bureaucracy are themselves interested enough and principled enough to control themselves. Unfortunately, there's an element of "employer of last resort" at play regardless of anything else that may or may not be going on.
Ignoring the apparent protocol overhead, the entire structure would appear to be a massive responsibility and accountability denial scheme, as far as the electorate is concerned. Committees on steroids, or, as Dan Davies would have it, "accountability sinks". Worth noting that local government structures don't appear to get a look in.
So much bandwidth must exist such that at the C-suite (Ministerial level) the organisation(s) are effectively out of (voter) control. The oversight simply can't be done via the mechanisms within the Cabinet or the Commons.
As far as the DfT is concerned, WT-bleeding-fuckitty-F is that apparent "board" structure doing there?
(1) In line with your view, he's somewhat of a tragic figure. Gets some of the right problems, but self destructs because his only tactics are 'blow it up and replace it with something new'.
(2) There's a lot of post-hoc rationalisation/mythologising to make him appear in a better light, and he's just fundamentally an completely incoherent thinker. There seems to be an inconsistency between his argument that the point of Brexit was to shock the British state onto a new course (i.e. purely an opportunistic means to an end) and the idea that he has been preparing for such a referendum for at least a decade beforehand (mythology of the North East England devolution referendum etc etc). Covid-era blog edits are consistent with this,
Largely just agree. It seems to be the case (and this isn't just a Classic Dom problem, it's present in lots of other parts of the British Right too) that his work history doesn't really include being part of a large scale organisation, or managing a complex department outside of government. Of course, such experience is no guarantee of wisdom, but the lack of it seems to be extremely fertile ground for atomistic thinking.
(Mind you, looking at the polls, starting to worry that this might be a problem across our politics and going to keep biting us despite a change of government.)
Now I would really like a discussion between Dominic Cummings, Dan Davies, and Henry Farrell. Feels like they are all circling similar problems from very different perspectives, assumptions, and tactics...
I kind of would also like this, although I'd also be very uneasy
Yeah. I could see how the conversation might go sideways--or that you give him some implementation perspective that makes him effective in ways that you might not like...
I'd have said Dom's key ideas include that only him and about three of his mates should be allowed to decide anything, and that spreading misinformation to achieve his short-term goals is totally justified, neither of which seems likely to help with the management capacity problem..
I was trying to be maximally fair within the self imposed word limits ... I'd disagree with "only him and about three of his mates", he seems to me to be always trying to find more people who share the vision. You're right about the other thing though - he really does ignore the way that the tactics he's got into the habit of using are themselves incredibly damaging.
Maybe. I guess it's hard to see that when the only vision I can see is the flash of a hand grenade.
Admittedly I've never made it to the end of one of his blog posts, could be all sorts of gems lurking there..
Sound.
When I was at Microsoft there was a "corporate advice column" blog (by Eric Brechner) which had a post on "bludgeoning versus navigating" that I think is pretty good: https://imwrightshardcode.com/2014/09/the-value-of-navigation/
"There are two ways to adapt from the current state to the future state:
Declare the future state by leadership edict. I call this 'bludgeoning.'
Lay out a roadmap that allows people, tools, rewards, and practices to reach the destination smoothly and predictably over time. I call this 'navigating.'
Bludgeoning is rampant at Microsoft. It’s painful, error-prone, and wasteful. Although bludgeoning usually, eventually succeeds, it often takes multiple attempts. These attempts are not iterations, but failures followed by resets. Guess what? There’s a better way."
I think this post was kind of subtweeting (subblogging?) the leadership of the Windows organization at the time, which had taken some broadly-justified-in-the-abstract changes to how testing and releases worked, associated with the then-recent CEO change, and implemented them in an extremely abrupt and chaotic manner, causing quality degradation from which I don't think they've really recovered to this day.
There are also a couple of good posts by the head of Office engineering at the time, Terry Crowley, detailing how they more successfully took Office through analogous changes, in which he also casts a bit of shade on the Windows organization:
https://hackernoon.com/taking-office-agile-455f243e0978?ref=hackernoon.com
https://hackernoon.com/windows-as-a-service-f666206233f5
You might reasonably suspect he's biased from his position, but the posts do accord pretty well with my own perception. BTW, one bit I especially like:
"Establishing feasibility before pointing the team down a path was also critical. “Establishing feasibility” sounds bloodless but often the process was actually some key passionate engineer completing a deep analysis or building a model or prototype that created trust and belief. The click-to-run installation tools was one example where one of our senior engineers, known for an ability to bull through complexity, was convinced he could take on the notorious complexity of the install process and build something that would change the way we worked. My style is usually point by point deep analysis but sometimes you need someone who will combine some key clarifying insight and then just keep on digging and chipping away at a nasty problem until it is solved."
This is waaay too generous. Cumming's worldview and approach are both damaging.
First, why would you not take into account the "needless fight-picking and intellectual showboating"? These suggest vanity as opposed to substance is his driving force; why on earth is it reasonable for him to dismiss 'politicians' when he himself invests so much in his image?
Second, the basis for his worldview is that you just need to cut through red tape - find the right leaders and let them move fast and break things. But there are really, really few people who are good enough to do that in a net beneficial way! You cannot expect an organisation as huge as the British government to be staffed with such people at all levels. You need bureaucracy to control for peoeple's incompetence, and unfortunately, corruption.
Third, his highly divisive and manipulative approach is in itself damaging. It erodes trust, promotes bad behaviour and lying, and sets a bad standard. His modus operandi is leaks, betrayals, backstabbings, backroom dealings, etc. Is this how we want people to behave?
Well, reading Cumming's writing is bloody hard work - partially down to the "intellectual showboating" or "look at the stuff I know, I'm clever, me" - and there's more than a fair amount of analogy building, which doesn't help. For my money, you might as well attempt to ignore that element, just on the off-chance there's actually something there.
"You cannot expect an organisation as huge as the British government...", umm, sorry, as a voter, I should bloody expect that the people involved in the bureaucracy are themselves interested enough and principled enough to control themselves. Unfortunately, there's an element of "employer of last resort" at play regardless of anything else that may or may not be going on.
Anyway, have a gander here; https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations and then run through the "works with" and take a look at the structure here (fr'instance); https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-transport
Ignoring the apparent protocol overhead, the entire structure would appear to be a massive responsibility and accountability denial scheme, as far as the electorate is concerned. Committees on steroids, or, as Dan Davies would have it, "accountability sinks". Worth noting that local government structures don't appear to get a look in.
So much bandwidth must exist such that at the C-suite (Ministerial level) the organisation(s) are effectively out of (voter) control. The oversight simply can't be done via the mechanisms within the Cabinet or the Commons.
As far as the DfT is concerned, WT-bleeding-fuckitty-F is that apparent "board" structure doing there?
This makes no fucking sense to me.
Two thoughts:
(1) In line with your view, he's somewhat of a tragic figure. Gets some of the right problems, but self destructs because his only tactics are 'blow it up and replace it with something new'.
(2) There's a lot of post-hoc rationalisation/mythologising to make him appear in a better light, and he's just fundamentally an completely incoherent thinker. There seems to be an inconsistency between his argument that the point of Brexit was to shock the British state onto a new course (i.e. purely an opportunistic means to an end) and the idea that he has been preparing for such a referendum for at least a decade beforehand (mythology of the North East England devolution referendum etc etc). Covid-era blog edits are consistent with this,